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Apple will no longer fix the $17,000 gold Apple Watch
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Even before they were unsupported, how have they not been “obsolete” for some time. Cannot imagine how slow a gen 1 watch would be. I can see the appeal of a timeless heirloom watch, but this is such a brain dead purchase.
Well, it’s not a brain dead purchase when $20k doesn’t even register for you.
Got $500,000,000 in the bank? Who cares?
You family has billions and you just have an unlimited alllowance. Who cares.
That’s who this is for.
With that being said, Apple did it for one year and I think it was just a marketing stunt. Everyone talked about it and now people know what an Apple Watch is.
That's exactly what it was. They never expected to sell many, just get the headlines for making a "luxury" watch that could "compete" with the likes of Rolex. That some ultra-wealthy people went out and bought one was just a bonus.
And now its built-in obsolescence is being paraded around pointing out why no one should buy such a thing ever again.
They didn’t even carry them at all of their stores.
I did get to wear one once, and only did so I could say I wore a watch that cost more than my car.
It is for those with more money than sense, 100%. No matter how much money you have, it’s not going to solve the problem of it being incompatible with a newer iPhone. And that makes anyone who bought this a clown.
The point is that for them, it doesn't matter if the watch is obsolete and ends up in a drawer after a few years. They'll just buy a new one.
For them 20k is like $20 for you.
You’re actually off by a lot more than you realize.
Average US income is about $31.2k, Beyoncé (who bought one) has an income of about $90m.
Meaning $20k to her is around $0.64 in relative wealth to the average person.
Literally pennies.
It’s all relative.
If I spend £1 of my last £5 on a bottle of water, I’m equally as dumb.
That’s accurate I think but the departure point here is where Apple was making noises about delivering ‘premium jewellery’ or some such spiel.
Rolex, Omega, etc. all support their products for life and beyond. I’m still able to get my dads Speedmaster from the 60s serviced, heck my daily driver Seiko Pepsi from the 80s still has parts available.
Apple can easily afford this level of support which makes it kind of iffy that they don’t.
Is there really a reason to need faster smart watches? I can understand shrinking the internals to pack in a larger battery, but I'm kinda confused about what newer smart watches do that requires a more powerful processor (I don't own a smart watch).
It seems like you could support backward compatibility pretty easily by having basic software running on the watch with a program-agnostic API to send and receive info from the watch (kinda like midi or osc). I doubt the processor necessary to send, receive, decode and display information in this format would require that much power. If smart watches honestly get slower over time, the only thing I can think is that the software itself is getting less efficient at doing the same tasks it previously did.
Software is a gas: it expands to fill the processor and memory you give it. That's a goofy way of saying that, as manufacturers cram faster processors and more memory into devices, software developers will use the extra facilities.
If you're on an old device with limited CPU/RAM, you'll be forced to upgrade to a newer OS that was built with newer devices in mind.
Andy and Bill’s Law
Mostly new sensors rather than larger battery I think. For instance, newer Apple Watches can monitor temp and oxygen (at least in some capacity).
I have a S3 Apple Watch, and while it's stuck on an older version of watchOS, it serves my purposes perfectly. Sends me notifications, lets me control my music and tracks my exercise. That's pretty much all I need from a smart watch at this point. The battery isn't amazing, but if I charge in the evening when I'm watching TV, it'll last me through the night. I give it a little bump while I'm drinking coffee and reading in the morning and it'll still be on 40/50% when I get home from work.
Good one lol. I'm sure apple will think about it haha
I wonder how much of that price is just the value of gold.
I’m seeing a 24k bracelet no watch and similar shape is $5k to $10k
Very little of the price is the gold.
An actual gold watch case (excluding the bracelet and the movement inside it) weighs about 20g.
At about £50 a gram that's £1000.
And I doubt the amount of gold in the case of the Apple watch is anywhere near the same amount as in a traditional gold watch case.
There is almost no gold in it. 18k gold is 75% gold by weight, not volume. Apple created an alloy that, in addition to the normal metals, is mostly lightweight ceramic.
At the time I was surprised there wasn't a class action suit. They were charging an amount that was in line with real gold watches and yeah the "gold" part was 75% gold by weight but it was such a departure from anything else ever called 18k gold it just seemed like a straight up scam to me.
I was talking about the bracelet, the watch itself is essentially e waste I think it’s only 18k gold anyway seems like the price of just branding/exclusivity
It's a fucking watch. I mean it can also monitor bpm and stuff like that but I can't imagine it's doing any complex scientific calculations on there.
And I’m sure you’re posting this comment from your eMachine? The Apple Watch is a computer. As applications become more demanding, any older computer will be “slower”.
Gen 1 Apple Watch haver here
Yep it’s laggy and low FPS, but it does everything I need it to. I agree with you. Would I love a newer one? Sure, but do I need it? Hell no
Sure, I mean if you want to use your apple watch to play Tomb Raider or something, go ahead. When the apple watch first came out, most of the buyers used it to track fitness and sleep stuff. It has now become a messenger device, phone, email client. Even with all these extra features, I can't imagine the consumer wanting much more from this tiny interface.